By Kerry Davies
My wedding is in just a few months. But forget agonising over dress designs, flowers and how many vegans are on the guest list, my main concern has been how to tell my family and friends that instead of settling down in preparation for a family after I've said "I do", I am - at the age of 24 - about to be sterilised.
Until now, Joe, my 26-year-old fiance, and I (see picture at bottom of article) have shrugged off hints about grandchildren from our parents. We've smiled compliantly when our closest friends have talked about going through pregnancy together and even nodded with enthusiasm when our caterers told us we must save a slice of the wedding cake for our first baby's christening.
But all the time we've both known that neither of us wants children - ever. It has always been this way for me. Even as a little girl I played only with dinosaur toys. I loathed dolls and despised girls who pushed plastic babies around in pushchairs.
I was much more interested in reading books, climbing trees and dreaming up adventures.
Mum and Dad put it down to me being a tomboy, yet when my younger brothers - now 18 and nine years old - arrived, I worshipped them. I loved helping take care of them and as the years passed I realised we had been blessed with wonderful parents. I began to see the sacrifices they had made for us and felt so lucky to have had them.
And yet the prospect of one day becoming a mother myself literally made me feel sick. Ever since I can remember I have felt the same - an overwhelming instinct that I just never wanted to be a mother.
But strongly as I felt, I also knew how unusual this made me and it was something I learnt not to talk about, laughing along whenever friends and family discussed babies.
I always worried about finding a man who felt the same way I did when it came to not having children. To be honest, I never thought I would. I envisaged meeting 'The One', falling in love and then watching the relationship slowly die when my resistance to start a family became too much for the other person.
And then, in October last year, I met Joe at a dinner party. We clicked immediately. We had so much in common, even learning that our respective friends always introduced us as "the quirky, weird one". Had the experience not been so powerful, unexpected and dazzling, I would have said it was a cliche encounter found only in films.
He offered to walk me home, but when we reached my nearby flat, I made my excuses. I didn't even leave time for an exchange of phone numbers; I was terrified of feeling this strongly about another human being so quickly.
If I allowed myself to get involved - to fall in love as I knew I would with him - wouldn't my adamant refusal to have children destroy the relationship as I had always feared?
But then, over the next few weeks, we cropped up in one another's social lives on a regular basis. We talked in depth about our pasts and shared our cynical, but humorous outlook on life. I learnt Joe was an American who had worked in television before deciding to travel the world. Orphaned in his teens, he had been raised by foster parents in Florida.
Still, I refused to see him on my own. Until, just before last Christmas, we found ourselves alone on the front steps of a friend's Notting Hill townhouse smoking cigarettes.
"What do you want from life?" he asked. This was it. The conversation I had been dreading in which, to be fair to him, I would have to reveal my selfish beliefs on motherhood.
All my life I had heard women who decided against children branded monsters and unnatural and it broke my heart to think I would lose someone I cared for so deeply because I didn't want to have his children.
I took a deep breath. "I'm passionate about my career - writing is who I am - but I suppose my only real desire other than to do well work-wise is to travel. I want to see the world, discover new things, meet new people and unearth the weird and wonderful."
"And what about children?" I was stunned; nobody had ever asked me this so directly, but it gave me the opportunity to be honest and I was almost relieved, if not unbelievably sad, to know that this experience was coming to an end. "I don't want children, ever."
I looked up to gauge his reaction, but he remained quiet.
"I've never wanted children," I went on. "And I know I never will. I can't bear the thought of being tied down, a dependable mother and stable. I admire women who do it, but I've come to terms with the fact that it's just not who I am and I would be completely hopeless at it, not to mention resentful. It's not really a decision I've made, I just know. I've always felt this way. I couldn't even try."
I could feel him trembling beside me. After a couple of minutes of silence he began telling me about his relationship history; how he had never been able to give himself fully to anyone because he knew - wholly - that he would never want to marry them and have children.
His own childhood had been a bad one - violent and unstable - and he had no desire to continue his lineage at all. He was so strongly against having children that he had been resigned to leading a lonely and isolated life.
"Until I met you," he said looking at me intently. "I'm falling in love with you and I just can't go back to that solitary way of life now I know you exist."
I cried, overwhelmed with relief at the fact that, not only did he love me, but we shared the same attitude towards children. Both loving their company but unwilling - for our own specific reasons - to have our own.
As our relationship progressed, it was, quite simply, perfect. My family adored Joe, my friends loved having him around and I had the time of my life. When he returned to the US, I travelled to Florida with him for three months and felt very at home with his friends and family.
When he proposed eight months after we met, I accepted unquestioningly. We were both overjoyed and began making arrangements for months of travelling after the wedding. It seemed a good time to broach the subject of a more permanent method of birth control. I wanted to be sterilised.
I explained to Joe I didn't want the fear of falling pregnant for the rest of my life, let alone while we were in the wilderness of some faraway country with no option of changing anything if the worst were to happen.
He thought hard, asked me whether I felt I was too young, questioned how I would feel if, God forbid, we were to separate and I found myself with a man who wanted children. He also raised the option of him having a vasectomy so that I would still have a choice.
But I didn't want the choice. I never have. I have been built without a desire for children and, should we - as he queried - part in the future, I would not be attracted to or start a relationship with a man who wanted a family. He persisted, asking me to think carefully about being sterilised at 24 years old, but in my mind it was simple. If women my age and much younger could decide to start a family, why couldn't I settle on not?
After much deliberation and soul searching, we agreed. With plans for the wedding, visas and travel arrangements engulfing us, we were finding our families' subtle hints and comments about trying for a baby too much to tolerate. It was time to expose our secret, something far harder than making the decision itself.
Telling Mom was incredibly hard - Dad and I have never talked about personal issues, so I knew the information would filter through when he needed to know. But Mom and I are very close and I have always had so much admiration for her as a person and a mother.
I knew she longed for the day when she would be surrounded by grandchildren, yet there I was, settling two mugs of tea on the patio table, about to tell her that the little people she had dreamed of meeting would never exist.
She allowed me to explain everything carefully, before finally she said: "I think you would be wise to wait until you are in your 30s because hormones have a habit of wreaking havoc with your emotions around then and you may find yourself regretting your decision."
She took a sip of tea and looked at me over the rim of her cup. Then she said: "Creating and raising a baby with someone you love is the most beautiful thing you can do; I would hate to see you miss out on that.
"And the idea of not getting to know the people you could bring into the world is a little unbearable for me."
Tears started falling down her cheeks and I could almost feel her grief. She had imagined the relationship she would have with my children for so long; I suppose it was something like mourning. I felt guilty and, not for the first time, wondered whether there was something horribly wrong with me.
I thought about it quietly for a while, gazing at my youngest brother's colourful play things scattered around the garden.
I had enjoyed being so much older than him when he was a newborn (I was 15), getting up in the night to help with feeds, rocking him to sleep, changing nappies and being there for his first words and steps.
A wave of nostalgia came over me and I felt a lump forming in my throat. I started to cry, too - a mixture of guilt and anger at not having been built the way other women were. How could I be so selfish to deny my parents in this way?
I asked myself, for the millionth time, whether my changing body would make me regret this decision one day as Mum had warned. But I came to the same conclusion I always had previously: yes, I liked cuddling babies and looking after them, but I loved handing them back again even more.
I adored my career, travelling was my life and without my spontaneous nature I wouldn't really know who I was. This was me. I relayed this to Mum after some time who was still tearful, but contemplative.
"The choice is yours of course," she said gently. "You know we'll support and love you whatever you do."
That single statement has now set the precedent for the rest of my life. While I won't have my own children to sustain and see through troubled times and tough resolves, I will aim to support and love my parents, brothers, friends and Joe in everything they do; just as they have all come to accept my newly disclosed lifestyle decisions so calmly and loyally.
Now that my secret is out, my operation will be carried out in a couple of months. I've got the biggest wedding present I could have hoped for; an acceptance from my family and friends that I will never be a mother. - Daily Mail